


Clockwork Hearts

by ashesandhoney



Category: Infernal Devices Series - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Angst, Canon Rewrite, Hurt/Comfort, Kissing, M/M, heronstairs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-30
Updated: 2015-03-21
Packaged: 2018-02-19 10:25:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2384957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashesandhoney/pseuds/ashesandhoney
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Starting before Clockwork Angel, this story attempts to reframe the love triangle as inarguably and complicatedly bisexual. It begins with a demon attack but will eventually include kissing and heartbreaks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Bleeding Out

Jem grabbed him by the shoulder and gave him a shake hard enough to make his teeth clatter. Will hadn't realized he had closed his eyes until he had to open them to find the other boy's face. Jem's bright silver eyes caught a gleam of light and flashed unearthly in the dark. His expression balanced between anger and concern. Tight lips, wide eyes, eyebrows drawn together. Will held his gaze for a long moment before his eyes fluttered shut again.

"I'm hardly injured," Will said but it made a liar of him as it slurred on the way out.

"You're losing blood like a fountain," Jem told him.

"S'not so bad," Will said, "Doesn't really hurt."

"That's because you're fainting, mùtourén," Jem said and Will couldn't remember exactly what the phrase meant but Jem's tone told him that it wasn't a glowing compliment. Will swore back when Jem tightened whatever tourniquet he had wrapped around the fountaining artery. He swore again at the burn of the stele but that was more for effect than anything else.

Will had been bitten on the shoulder by whatever stinking demon thing had come out of that hole in the ground. Beyond big and smelly he hadn't got any details before Jem had killed it. Will was annoyed to have not been the one to win the battle and he was worried that Jem might have overextended himself. These thoughts should have been secondary to how rapidly his life was pouring out of the torn artery and down his chest and arm but they weren't. Thoughts of Jem were never secondary.

The blood was dripping off his fingers and he wiped them on whatever was nearest. It happened to be Jem's thigh. In response Jem kicked him in the ankle and threw another Chinese swear word at him. Will was leaning against a brick wall and even still it nearly knocked him off balance. Jem had to yank him upright again. His injured shoulder dragged painfully across the rough brick behind him. In retaliation Will smeared his blood soaked forearm across Jem's shirt. The blood wasn't visible against the black gear but Jem's concerned look disappeared into baffled annoyance and that had been the goal.

"Makes you look like you actually did something in the fight," Will said.

"Fuck you," Jem told him and his voice wasn't as angry. Will took that as a good sign. Both that Jem wasn't injured and that his own injury wasn't life threatening.

"Language, Carstairs," Will said. "I might take that as an invitation."

Jem glared at him. It was an almost perfect imitation of Charlotte's disapproving look and it made Will grin. Jem held the look long enough that Will thought he might actually mean it but then he shook his head with a half laugh. Will lifted his arm to see if the iratze had been working and Jem grabbed his elbow and forced it back down with a less joking glare. He said, "You are going to tear out the healed skin and we'll have to start all over again. It's a long way back to the Institute and I am not prepared to carry you that far."

Will settled back against the wall and then gave up and slid to the ground. He landed in a puddle and had the disgusting realization that it was a pool of his own blood. The blood loss was making him dizzy enough that he didn't care. Jem sat down beside him without complaining about the blood and Will managed to find the energy to smile. Jem's hair was the brightest thing in the alley and Will let it hold his wandering attention.

Will started to say something with a proper rude gesture, forgetting that his arm was still healing. The pain flared. He did not want to faint. He wasn't entirely sure he could avoid it. Jem grabbed his arm in both hands and held it in place between them so Will couldn't make it worse before it had healed enough.

"Thank you," Will muttered. He must have been out of it to say that out loud. He caught Jem raising his eyebrows at him out of the corner of his eye but missed whatever he said next. His last thought before fainting entirely was to hope he wouldn't be out long enough that Jem would actually try to carry him back.

* * *

 

He hadn't needed to be carried but he had needed a little more support than usual to walk in a straight line. Jem kept casting worried glances his way and Will kept watch for signs of pain or the pupil dilation that came with an attack. There was no one waiting when they finally made it back, blood smeared and exhausted. It had been a routine patrol. Walk the streets, be visible, take note of disturbances, come back by the time the clocks struck 2. It was after 4. Dawn almost beat them home.

Jem did most of the work of opening doors and pushing Will in the right direction. The hallways were dark, the witch light turned low. Sophie and Agatha would be up soon to start the day's chores but even they were asleep now. Will left a long, half dried blood smear against the wall by the kitchen when Jem stopped him to go pilfer food and something to drink. He wasn't bleeding any more but there was a lot of blood soaked into his gear.

In his room he pulled blood soaked gear off and left it in a heap by the burned down fire. It was dingy and messy and the room looked more like the bastard offspring of a library and a garbage heap than it looked like a place where someone might live. Will kicked a pile of clothing out of his way and headed for pyjamas Jem stopped him to check the bite. He prodded at Will's shoulder hard enough to make him grimace.

"I'm going to have a fantastic scar," Will told him.

"If you don't keep ripping the healing tissue, you will need to amputate your entire arm," Jem retorted.

"That'd be dashing and roguish," Will said.

"It would make it difficult to swing a sword," Jem said.

"I could learn to fight left handed," Will shrugged which made the shoulder protest with a stab of pain, "Iratzes should work faster. Stupid, bloody magic."

"You need to rest. Do you want me to wake Charlotte?" Jem asked.

"God no," Will said, "Your fussing alone is enough to make me want to fling myself out the window. Charlotte I might just eject from the building in a fit of annoyance."

"Luckily your arm is still too damaged to lift me," Jem said handing him a glass of water and then another when he gulped that one down faster than he'd intended. Will had already thanked him once that evening and he wasn't about to do it again but he met his parabatai's gaze long enough to say it silently. He never knew, not for sure, if Jem understood him when he did this. Jem squeezed his good shoulder and Will believed that maybe Jem did understand it even if he didn't understand why Will would never say it.

Jem dug through the disaster area that was the room, found him a sleep shirt and threw it at his face. He shrugged into night cloths with a vibrant collection of swear words each time he had to move his arm and then collapsed onto the bed. It was unmade. Sophie sometimes tried to make it for him but once he'd flopped onto her carefully made sheets and rolled around while she was picking up the half finished bowls of food he left lying on the floor. He'd done it to annoy her and she had given up entirely on making the bed or tidying the floor.

"Move," Jem said pushing on his good side.

"No," Will said, "You have your own room."

"It's far away and I just had to half carry you across London," Jem said. "Move, there is more than enough room for three people in this ridiculous bed of yours if you didn't take up the entire thing."

"It's more fun when the other two are pretty girls," Will said.

"Well, I'm not a pretty girl but you were the one planning to take me to bed earlier," Jem said.

"I think I said "fuck" which isn't quite the same thing. You don't necessarily have to wake up with the people you fuck," Will said but he pushed a pile of books out of the way and made room. They'd shared a bed before and had fallen asleep leaned together in training room corners and in front of fires more times than Will could count.

"Are you still wearing that bloody pair of trousers?" Will asked.

"Yes, but whose fault is that?" Jem asked. He'd taken off his boots and the jacket from his gear but he didn't have anything to change into so he still wore the trousers Will had bled all over and the white shirt he'd had on under the gear. He faced away from Will and his shoulders looked far too sharp under the fabric. Will buried the need to check Jem for a fever or to ask him if he had any pain. He kicked the blanket loose of whatever he had left on the bottom of the bed and threw it over Jem.

He fell asleep almost instantly. Usually he was up half the night trying to stop his mind from whirring. He would tell himself that it was because of the injury and that it had nothing to do with having Jem there.


	2. Waking Up

For no sane reason that Jem could imagine, Will had one of Henry's alarm clocks balanced on a pile of books beside his bed. It looked much like a regular alarm clock but had the right collection of runes inscribed on the inner workings to keep it from needing wound daily. The stupid thing started to ring about four hours after they'd made it home.

Jem lunged for it and his joints protested. The yin fen he'd taken the night before had completely worn off and the aches were back. He curled his lip but said nothing. He grabbed the clock forgetting that Henry's inventions always had side effects. The metal casing was hot enough that he dropped the clock. It bounced off the bed and landed on the floor still making a horrific noise.

"Kill it," Will muttered and while he probably meant something like, "Please activate the switch to end the noise," Jem wrapped his hand in a shirt and picked up the clock. He weighed it in his hand a moment and then threw it at the wall. His wrist sent shooting pains up his arm but the ringing stopped.

"It's dead," Jem said lying back.

"Henry will be so disappointed," Will said.

"Henry never comes in here. If he did, he'd want to experiment on that thing growing in the corner," Jem said looking over. Will lay on his stomach with his injured arm thrown out to the side. His other hand held a pillow over his head. His laugh was muffled and half asleep.

"Let me see your shoulder," Jem said.

"Sleeping," Will said.

"Your alarm clock just tried to set me on fire. I'm not sleeping any more. Why don't you ever let anyone take care of you?" Jem asked. Will grunted and wrapped his good arm a little tighter around the pillow over his head, "If it was poisoned or if the iratze wasn't strong enough to heal it down to the bone, you will be in trouble."

"Stop worrying," Will said.

Jem rolled across the bed and pried the pillow out of Will's hands. He had expected more of a fight. Will looked up at him with darkly shadowed eyes. Vulnerable Will always set Jem on edge. There was something wrong. Will never let it out, not even when they were alone. Charlotte said he'd cried once and usually that seemed impossible. Will was not the sort of person who cried. But when he looked like this, Jem could imagine it and it was unsettling.

He'd been prepared to argue and cajole Will down to see Charlotte and possibly have the Brothers called to check the arm out properly. Instead he lay back down so that his face was level with Will's and raised his eyebrows. Will didn't usually tell him.

Maybe a joke with just a touch of truth in it or something like the previous evening's muttered thank you. An accidental truth like Will's accidental kindnesses that slipped out when he wasn't paying attention. He'd lean down to pick something up to return to Sophie when her arms were full or he'd bring back some unusual spice from the market and leave it for Agatha to experiment with. He'd only do it when no one was looking. Agatha had once thanked Jem for bringing her turmeric. He'd been confused about it for a week. He wasn’t even sure what turmeric was.

"What would I do without you?" Will asked in an infinitely small voice.

"Get yourself eaten, obviously," Jem tried to make it a joke. Please make it a joke, he thought.

Will frowned, he wasn't going to take the bait. His voice was too serious and Jem’s heart hurt, "I mean it, I don't know what I would do without you."

"I'm not going anywhere for awhile yet," Jem said ignoring the ache that had spread from the smaller joints of his fingers and wrists to his shoulders and knees. Walking back to his room was not going to be enjoyable. He gauged the pain. He was fairly certain he could do it without flinching if he left soon. He wasn’t about to let Will see it when he was already this worried.

Will reached out and grabbed a fistful of Jem's shirt and pulled him a little closer. Jem blinked slowly, trying not to react. Will's eyes were deep and dark and unfathomable. He was at his most unreadable when he was upset. He buried all but the tiniest shards of his emotions and the resulting mosaic was just pain and chaos. Jem could count the number of times he’d seen it on one hand.

"Talk," Jem said softly even though he knew that Will wouldn't.

“I need you,” Will said.

“You don’t, you just like me,” Jem said trying to lighten the mood while almost wishing Will would go back to his usual pattern of sneering and saying nothing. Will closed his eyes and if he hadn’t been holding so tight, Jem might have thought he’d fallen asleep. The hand in his shirt pulled him a little closer so they were forehead to forehead. Jem inhaled sharply, the room smelled like dust and Will and the tang of the blood in his clothes though it was long dry. He forced himself to stay still.

“William,” Jem said after what felt like hours of silence and nearness but couldn’t have been more than a few minutes.

“You’ve got a fever,” Will said.

“I usually do, it’s nothing,” Jem said. It wasn’t nothing. His shoulder ached from the receding yin fen and the angle that Will’s grip on his shirt kept it at. If he left now he could make it back to his room before he was too ill to do it alone. Will’s forehead was cool against his. He hadn’t even noticed the fever until Will had mentioned it. Now he could feel the sweat beading on his lower back.

Will raised his head and though a voice in Jem’s head told him to pull back he didn’t. Their faces were far too close. All Jem could see was midnight blue. If anyone else had an expression like that there would be tears but Will’s eyes were dry. Will closed them and his eyelashes were thick and dark against his skin. Always with the bold colours.

Jem started to shift which put them nose to nose, breathing the same air. Will’s eyes were open again and they were a place. It wasn’t a nice place but it was a space that Jem very much wanted the chance to see up close. How could one person hide so much? Who was Will Herondale really? Jem never asked but some days the desire to know what lay behind all the defenses and the snide remarks overwhelmed him. He hoped to hell that it wasn’t just chaos and darkness.

“I could never leave you easily,” Jem said.

Will made a noise that might have been a sob if he hadn’t strangled it and pulled Jem in again.

There wasn’t any space left.

Will’s mouth was just a little open like he had something to say.

The moment held.

Jem broke it.

He should have leaned back but he didn’t.

He pressed his lips against that little space. Will’s hand released his shirt and he braced himself to be shoved off, it was going to hurt for so many more reasons than his aching shoulders.

Will’s hand, far gentler than Jem would have ever expected found his neck and then slid up to his jaw. Will kissed him. It wasn’t just contact. He hadn’t been brave enough for more than that brush of touch but Will didn’t have that problem.

Jem opened his eyes but Will’s were still shut. Gentle but insistent, Will kissed his way from one corner of Jem’s mouth to the other. The self consciousness evaporated and it took the building headache and the protesting joints and the fever with it.

Jem had no idea what he was doing but that didn’t particularly matter because it was Will. He kissed back, mimicking at first and then kissing harder. He ran his tongue along Will’s bottom lip and Will bit him ever so carefully. He felt that graze of teeth to his toes and the thrill of it brought a noise he hadn’t heard before out of his throat. Will smiled at him, their mouths so close together that he couldn’t see it but he could feel it. Jem smiled back.

At some point his hands had wove their way up into Will’s hair which was a tangled mass, curlier than usual from the damp of the London air the night before. He’d touched Will’s hair before but it wasn’t like this. This was different. He kissed along that lower lip and smoothed his fingers through rumpled black curls. The smiling didn’t go away. Will kept smiling at him and he kept answering it without breaking away.

Will’s good hand was moving, over his shoulders and down his back. It made him aware again that his shirt was damp. He was sweating. He should be concerned that he was deteriorating this fast. Will kissed the corner of his lip, his cheek, his jaw and then down the side of his neck and he forgot to be worried. He just held onto Will’s hair and tilted his head back. He gasped and started to push back against Will, he wanted to find that same spot just above the collar bone and see if it made Will shiver too.

A knock. Will looked up and Jem leaned in, ignoring the sound in favour of closing his mouth on Will’s throat and kissing a wet line down toward his collar.

“Master Herondale?” Sophie called and reality slammed into Jem. His head came up but his vision wouldn’t clear.

“Master Herondale, did you bleed up and down this carpet?” Sophie’s voice was right at the door. Jem blinked hard and gave his head a little shake. His vision cleared briefly. How had he gotten this sick, this fast?

“Will,” he croaked out. “Will, I don’t feel well.”

His blurry vision brought back the headache he’d been ignoring and he pressed his face into Will’s shoulder. Solid, warm, safe. Will’s hands on his face this time were a nurse’s hands. Clinical not passionate. Will kissed his forehead before his blurry vision pulled him all the way down into the dark.


	3. Falling Apart

Jem was sitting up, wrapped in a robe and staring out the window when Will finally got up enough courage to go and see him. He had prepared apologies and he had prepared calculated indifference and he had prepared to pretend it hadn’t happened. Jem looked at him with eyes like the moon and just a hint of a smile and all of Will’s preparations fell apart. He crossed the room and sat down in the chair beside the bed without saying anything.

Jem smiled at him, reached across the space between them and touched his face with cool gentle fingers. Will always knew what expression was on his own face. He had practiced and practiced until he could school every reaction. That seemed to have fallen apart too. He hadn’t any idea what he looked like. He was fairly certain he wasn’t smiling but beyond that, not a clue. Incredulity perhaps or fiercely protective joy. Those feelings roared through him so perhaps the spilled out onto his expression like he were a normal person.

Jem pulled him forward with the gentlest possible pressure on his cheek and Will’s heart rate was erratic. When he was close enough there was a very gentle kiss. Will got up and sat on the bed so he was close enough that it could be more than a brush of lips. Jem was warm but not feverish and his hair was soft as silk when Will’s fingers found their way to it. Gentle and curious. Will had never, in his hurried experiences with kissing ever considered curious as a description of the process.

Will was smiling broadly, stupidly, when they pulled apart. He wanted to crawl into that bed beside Jem and - his imagination failed. He wasn’t sure quite what he wanted to do once he was there. Hold on mostly. Hold on to this one shuddering shimmering bright spot of happy in the miserable landscape of his days.

Jem’s hand was on his neck and he was watching him with serious eyes. Will wanted to look up and see that shimmering happiness looking back at him but Jem’s face was so much more complicated than that. Just the look was enough to force Will to think about the complications about the world beyond the two of them and the closed door.

“We can’t do that,” Jem said.

“There is not a single good reason why not,” Will argued immediately. “There are reasons, I know but none of them are good enough.”

“You are a rising star, William,” Jem said, “I mean that in every way. You are bright and beautiful and someday the Clave will be a better place because you are running Institutes and becoming Consul.”

“No one would ever make me Consul,” Will snorted while his mind ran in circles. He needed to turn this conversation around before the bright spot went out. It was going from something tangible and warm to a rising star being lifted out of reach. What a horrible metaphors stars were cold and distant and lonely. He did not want to be a star.

“You will make yourself Consul or whatever it is you want to be just by deciding to do it. You haven’t decided to be that man yet but he’s in you. I can see him sometimes,” Jem said and he placed his hand flat on Will’s chest where his heart was.

“I don’t want it,” Will said.

“Just the rumour of this will sink you,” Jem said.

“I don’t care,” Will said and that he meant. He said things every day that he did not mean. Horrible things that he wished he could take back but this he meant. He had never meant three words more.

“They will separate us, they’ll send me off to some hospice to die and they will send you off to some Institute in the backwaters of a country you’ve never heard off so that everyone can forget about this unfortunate little scandal,” Jem’s voice was calm but his eyes weren’t. Jem didn’t have chaos in him and yet there it was spilling out into his expression.

“Were you planning on sending out announcements? Who were you going to tell?” Will said.

“Secrets cannot be kept forever,” Jem said.

The twisting feeling in Will’s stomach had been about losing his own bright happy moment. For a brief moment he could imagine Jem smiling at him and crossing the room to curl together and block out the world. He hurt at the idea of losing that before he’d even had a chance to have it. Now the twist turned and wrapped around his heart the other way because Jem’s face was sad. He was hiding it but not well.

Will climbed up onto the bed and sat down on the side of Jem where there was enough space to allow for it and wrapped an arm around his shoulder. For a moment he thought Jem was going to pull away and then he turned and let Will pull him into a half hug. His cheek on Will’s shoulder, his forehead just brushing Will’s neck. The shimmering perfection had gone out of the moment. It was overshadowed by complications but the brightness couldn’t be smothered.

Protecting Jem came before everything else in his life. That wasn’t new. It came with a more painful intensity now than it had before but it wasn’t new. Will would never be Consul or the Head of an Institute or even a leader on a team in battle. Will couldn’t be those things because he would endanger everyone. Good leaders were loved. Charlotte had taught him that. Will was good for only one thing and that one thing was the person beside him.

Jem sighed. It was a long deep inhalation of breath and Will tightened his hold and closed his eyes because he had no idea what words were going to come next.

“I do not want to be another of your secrets,” Jem said and the words were half smothered because he spoke against Will’s chest, “I will not be a weapon in your war against the world.”

Will almost let out a sob. The thing in his chest stopped twisting and clawed at his heart. This feeling that had been there since he was 12 years old. It was not about his war against the world. It was the only thing he had that wasn’t but he couldn’t tell Jem that. Even in this moment when he was somehow, impossibly, breaking the one heart that mattered, he couldn’t explain it.

“Do you think that’s what this is?” Will asked, “You are not a weapon. I did not kiss you last night because I wanted to add some new layer of scandal to my reputation. I did it because…” and he faltered there because he wasn’t sure why. No. He knew why but he wasn’t sure he could say those words out loud.

“You have a well of secrets deeper than anyone I know. I have always let you keep them, I will always let you keep them but I will not be one of them,” Jem said.

“And so you’d rather never do that again, turn back the hands of the clock and pretend it was all a fever dream?” Will asked and his voice wasn’t quite friendly. He tried to smooth the edges off before he spoke again. Will was only good for one thing and he was going to fail at that too because he couldn’t keep his temper in check, “Would you rather it hadn’t happened?”

“No,” Jem said and he cuddled closer, not shifted or moved but cuddled. He actually nuzzled Will’s neck and Will almost fell apart completely. He kissed the top of Jem’s head and felt the pull of a smile against his throat where Jem’s face had come to rest. The flicker of the smile faded and when he spoke again it had all of Jem’s stubbornness in it, “No, I do not wish it hadn’t happened but I will not risk it happening again. You have a future that I can do nothing but destroy.”

“You improve everything you touch. I am better when you are near me. Everyone is made better by knowing you,” Will said but he knew he had lost the argument. Very briefly his imagination provided him with an image of the Gard hall and the decision that they be separated for their own good. He could give up this and survive. He couldn’t survive Jem being sent away.

Jem didn’t answer him but he also didn’t move. He arm lay across Will’s chest and his breathing was even against the skin of Will’s neck. Neither of them was willing to be the first to move because once they broke apart the little bright spot of happiness would break apart too. Jem fell asleep and still Will stayed.

Will would have stayed until the world stopped turning but the world never stopped turning.

Eventually there was commotion in the hall as Charlotte came looking for them because some new problem or another had arose. Will disentangled himself from Jem and laid him back down in the bed without waking him. He stole one more kiss and a moment to stare before he went to steer Charlotte away from Jem while he slept.

William Herondale was only good for one thing but he was very good at it. Jem was his to protect and he would not let anything stand in the way of that. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am currently calling this complete but it may find itself expanded with little ficlets that recast canon moments in light of these developments. If I come up with another complicated AU idea this may also find itself the basis of that too. I don't know exactly what comes next but now at least the little arc is complete.

**Author's Note:**

> The Infernal Devices books rather strongly imply that Will and Jem have the potential to be more than friends but canon never quite gets there. They love each other but that love is more easily interpreted as a deep friendship or familial relationship. This is an attempt to make the subtext less subtextual. 
> 
> I have the entire series worked out - the plot never changes and neither does Tessa's point of view but the motivations of both Will and Jem are wildly different up to the wedding proposal. Incidentally, you don't have to change a word of Clockwork Princess to make the premise that these two are madly in love work. 
> 
> I'm not going to rewrite the entire series. I may just write up to the start of Clockwork Angel (the promised 3 chapters) or I may continue it and write a series of altered scenes - Will and Jem's conversation in the carriage after the vampire party and the wedding proposal from Jem's point of view for example. 
> 
> I am aware that roughly 900 people before me have done canon rewrites featuring Heronstairs romance - I've read a lot of them - but I wanted to play with that story as well. Also I like writing kissing scenes.


End file.
